hackaday.com Archives - 02 May 2013, Thursday

I’ve seen this around before as it’s been in the Import/Drift scene for quite some time. You can make a more aesthetically pleasing version by using an open flame such as a butane burner or gas stove. You use pliers to hold the screwdriver over the flame till it gets soft enough that ...

She had built this big flat head on it, with the initial plan being that it would be the front “face” of the hammer. It didn’t really work out that way though. I ended up having to increase the size of the head a bit and change the orientation of the coil. I experimented with differen...

Awesome job, craftsmanship, and respect for the aesthetics and preservation of vintage gear. This project was a pleasure to look at. A++ A couple of warnings of a general nature: I didn’t see a power transformer on this radio chassis. If not, that means that the chassis has a very goo...

The first thing we thought when looking at the cutter is where’s the tube? [Andreas] didn’t use a CO2 laser, so this ends up being rather low-powered. The cutting head is a 1W blue laser diode which manages to slice the three-ring binder separator pages he’s using for the stencils. Th...

This hack makes the virtual real by displaying your video game character’s health meter as a column of illuminated water . The build video, which you’ll find embedded after the break, is really quite remarkable. The column is a clear piece of pipe anchored at one end by hand-tightened...

The motor can’t be driven directly, but with a simple motor driver like the L293 chip [Dan] used it’s not hard to interface them with your control hardware of choice. From there he added an ATtiny85 which will take care of the stepping protocol necessary to move the motor. The Bluetoo...

On this installment of Retrotechtacular we’re taking a look at the history of the United States Antiballistic Missile System . The cold war was a huge driver of technological development, and this missile defense is a good example. At its most basic this is a radar system capable of t...

We’ve got some friends who have two sump pumps. One is a backup and sounds an alarm when it is switched on. But this only works as long as they’re home to hear it. [Felix Rusu] came up with a solution what will text him if the sump pump fails . This way he can head home, or call someo...

A pile of salvaged parts were found in a scanner and four different printers. He’s also powering the thing with an old PC PSU. The hot bed and extruder are brand new, which is a wise investment. We’re not sure about the threaded rod and bearings but we’d bet those are new as well. Whe...

We’ve seen this type of thing a few times before (even with XBMC in a SNES controller ) but there is one thing we hadn’t thought of lately. Newer versions of Windows have auto-launch disabled for USB drives. But [Joe] knew that there were still some USB sticks that manage to auto-laun...

We’ve seen this small, cheap, and powerful WiFi router before. But this time it’s up to no good. [Andy] used a TP-Link WR703N to build an upgraded WiFi Pineapple hacking tool. A WiFi Pineapple is a device spawned years ago by the Hak5 team (here’s a clip showing off the device ). It u...

[Michael Kohn] only accomplished about half of what he set out to, but we still think his TV channel switcher from a Chromebook turned out nicely . When starting the project he wanted to include a grid of listing so that he could choose a specific program, but decided that scraping th...

Another week has gone by and we hope you’ve been happily hacking away in your underground lairs. If not, here’s some inspiration that didn’t quite make it to the front page this week: [Razr] used a CFL ballast to replace the mechanical one in his fluorescent tube light fixture. To mak...

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Here’s a wristwatch concept we haven’t seen before. Instead of trying to sandwich everything inside of a case it uses a stack of PCBs as the body of the watch . [Mats Engstrom] wrote in to tip us off about his build. The design goes with LEDs which is nothing new. But unlike previous ...

Nice job, I always wanted to do this exact thing. Unfortunately, the car I had with steering wheel controls for the radio was totalled in an accident. I’m not sure you can actually reprogram the odometer through the OBD-II/CAN interface. I know that in some cars the mileage is stored ...

[Michael] loves this old organ of his, but recently he wondered if it would be possible to add MIDI out without altering its original functionality . With a bit of research and more than a bit of hard work he accomplished his goal. The nice thing about working on a quality piece of ha...

He’s using a 320×240 display which we ourselves have tried out with this board. It’s plenty fast enough to push image data in parallel, but if you’re looking for full motion video and audio we would have told you tough luck. [Vinod's] math shows that it is possible with a bit of file ...

He’s using a 320×240 display which we ourselves have tried out with this board. It’s plenty fast enough to push image data in parallel, but if you’re looking for full motion video and audio we would have told you tough luck. [Vinod's] math shows that it is possible with a bit of file ...

The image above shows a worker populating a set of boards with the flash memory dies. The waffle-grid to the right holds the dies. Each is a tiny glint of a component. The worker is not in a clean room, and is using a bamboo tool to pick up the pieces. [Bunnie] explains that he’s seen...

The Secret Life of Machines episodes are available to download, but “The Car” has a long section of bad video. Doesn’t matter where you download it, it’s a bad copy. :-( Why it’s bad is because the online ones were made from the DVD set which was made from tape transfers from the orig...

[Sprite_TM] is was sent an old LED Marquee by an anonymous fan of his hacking projects. The display isn’t full color, but it’s large — 224 by 48 pixels — and he figured he could render some okay images with the bi-color diodes. In the end, he replaced the controller and turned it into...

Not only does this mood lamp which [J. Sutton] built look great, but we love the modular design he adopted when building the circuit boards. If you’re building something that is going to sit on your desk for some time it just has to look good. We think that he achieved that, using a s...

[Chris Nafis] crunched the numbers and found out he could get filament for his 3D printer in bulk for about one-fifth the cost of the cartridges the company sells. This led him to print a feeder for his Cube 3D printer . We’re skeptical about the Cube 3D printer’s cartridges. They con...

It works something like a foot powered sewing machine. There’s a lever for your foot which converts the downward force from your foot into a rotating force which drives the work piece. The mechanics of the lathe are pretty common, but we think the build techniques he uses are anything...

If you’ve lost interest in that DVB dongle you bought to give software defined radio a try you should bust it back out. [Harrison Sand] just finished a guide on how to use SDR to listen in on Police and Fire radio bands . The project, which results in the crystal clear audio reception...

Say goodbye to the rest of your day. Here are the top 10 best videos about real hacking. We’ve already covered the absolute worst that hollywood has to offer, twice . Then, we did the best that hollywood could pull off . Now we’re enjoying the real thing. Feast your eyes on hacking as...

His coffee maker sits right next to the fridge, which has its own water supply. So one day he thought, why not run a line to the coffee maker as well? As far as plumbing projects go it’s very simple. He pulled out the refrigerator and added a T-fitting to split the water supply line. ...

Whenever I release a hackaday video, I invariably get comments and emails about my workbench. Some people are telling me to clean up, others are asking me about things they see in the background. This isn’t just a set that I film on. Obviously my videos aren’t high enough quality for ...

How lucky is [Transistor Man] that he found the materials for the tracks of this curved camera dolly just lying around the shop? The three rails making up the system are quarter-inch diameter and he was able to bend them by hand with the help of a 55 gallon drum. But to hold them in p...

[Martin Melchior] wanted to use an older Sigma lens with his Canon camera . The problem in trying to do so is that the camera uses a different communications protocol than the lens is expecting. But if you don’t mind cracking it open and doing a little microcontroller work you’ll be u...